Cognitive Ant colony optimization: A new framework in swarm intelligence

Abstract

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithms which belong to metaheuristic algorithms and swarm intelligence algorithms have been the focus of much attention in the quest to solve optimization problems. These algorithms are inspired by colonies of ants foraging for food from their nest and have been considered state-of-art methods for solving both discrete and continuous optimization problems. One of the most important phases of ACO algorithms is the construction phase during which an ant builds a partial solution and develops a state transition strategy. There have been a number of studies on the state transition strategy. However, most of the research studies look at how to improve pheromone updates rather than at how the ant itself makes a decision to move from a current position to the next position.
The aim of this research is to develop a novel state transition strategy for Ant Colony Optimization algorithms that can improve the overall performance of the algorithms. The research has shown that the state transition strategy in ACO can be improved by introducing non-rational decision-making.
The new proposed algorithm is called Cognitive Ant Colony Optimization and uses a new concept of decision-making taken from cognitive behaviour theory. In this proposed algorithm, the ACO has been endowed with non-rational behaviour in order to improve the overall optimization behaviour of ants during the process. This new behaviour will use a non-rational model named prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) to select the transition movements of the ants in the colony in order to improve the overall search capability and the convergence of the algorithm. The new Cognitive Ant Colony Optimization framework has been tested on the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP), Water Distribution System and Continuous optimization problems. The results obtained show that our algorithm improved the performance of previous ACO techniques considerably.